Rod Dreher is concerned about certain trends in law enforcement. He quotes Reul Marc Gerecht saying:
For the FBI, religion remains a much too sensitive subject, much more so than the threatening ideologies of yesteryear. Imagine if Maj. Hasan had been an officer during the Cold War, regularly expressing his sympathy for the Soviet Union and American criminality against the working man. Imagine him writing to a KGB front organization espousing socialist solidarity. The major would have been surrounded by counterintelligence officers.
Dreher goes on to say:
We Americans, religious and secular both, have powerful fundamental views about religion that put radical Islam in a certain context, one that prevents us from understanding how unlike other American religious expressions it is — and how much of a threat it is to the civil order. If you think of radical Islam not as a religion, but as a hostile ideology (e.g., communism), its nature becomes clearer.
Dreher is broadly correct here. The issue is not so much one of political correctness and over-sensitivity, but rather that Americans are used to an environment in which religion has been profoundly culturally neutered. Bloom puts it well [emphasis mine]:
Hobbes and Locke, and the American Founders following them, intended to palliate extreme beliefs, particularly religious beliefs, which led to civil strife. The members of sects had to obey the laws and be loyal to the Constitution; if they did so, others had to leave them alone, however distasteful their beliefs might be. In order to make this arrangement work, there was a conscious, if covert, effort to weaken religious beliefs, partly by assigning — as a result of great epistemological effort — religion to the realm of opinion as opposed to knowledge.
Many observers neglect the fact that the United States government is unusually tolerant of religious sentiment by the standards of secular governments that lack established churches. Our “wall of separation” is nothing compared to that in France, in Germany or, until a couple of years ago and possibly even now, in Turkey. There are few places in the world, and there were even fewer prior to the current wave of Americanization, where religion is viewed so comfortably as a private affair. Concerns about “moralistic therapeutic deism” miss the point — MTD is not a terrifying new movement that has leapt out of a closet and is now poisoning our children; it’s as old as America, the culmination of a long tradition of the secular authorities tolerating religion so long as it is not threatening and religion adapting to this climate by becoming non-threatening.
One can hardly blame the FBI for failing to take Hasan’s religion seriously. Unlike the vast majority of nations, America has had no significant history of religious violence or fanaticism since its founding. Radical political ideologies, on the other hand, are a great deal more familiar. Our country was founded by ideologues (yes, I only partially accept Charles Beard’s Marxist interpretation of the Constitution) and continues to produce large numbers of them to this day.
I strongly suspect that the compromise whereby religion agreed to be politically and culturally neutered in return for state tolerance is beginning to show some cracks. Should this occur, it will be bad for public order but from a Nietzschean (Dionysian) perspective the cultural effects may be salutary. Can we really expect the American volksgeist to become more passionate and less practical? Unclear, but I imagine that if stricter separation of church and state appears on the horizon, it will be a result not of the increasing secularization of our society, but rather of religion becoming a more serious threat to the political order.
November 23rd, 2009 | 2:36 pm
“Unclear, but I imagine that if stricter separation of church and state appears on the horizon, it will be a result not of the increasing secularization of our society, but rather of religion becoming a more serious threat to the political order.”
I’m curious as to your use of the term “religion.” Do you mean Islam or some other “religion?”
It is obvious that American society and its Muslim citizens need to be separated. We should not be placed in a position where, from time to time, some Muslim decides to massacre American in the name of his desert god. It’s the government’s responsibility to see that that doesn’t happen. So far the government has failed to provide for our safety. How many Americans must die?
November 23rd, 2009 | 3:17 pm
Bob, that’s an illegal, outrageous idea that lacks the virtue even of working on its own terms.
November 23rd, 2009 | 3:33 pm
Hey Will, I’ve enjoyed your writings from time to time and wanted to send you note of encouragement on a few occasions…but here are a few objections…
“America has had no significant history of religious violence or fanaticism since its founding. Radical political ideologies, on the other hand, are a great deal more familiar.”
1) Really? Aren’t radical political ideologies as moderated here as religion? This is the complaint of Louis Hartz, right? America hasn’t forced radical political ideologies to moderate themselves within its framework just as much and to the same extent as it has religion?
2) Are you sure that religion influences politics here LESS than in Europe? A private affair that profoundly influences policy, no?
3) I also find the suggestion that the founding generation wished to reduce religion to opinion a tad simplistic. Isn’t part of the reason for the difference between American democracy and others the fact that the founding generation, for various reasons and to various extents, recognized it as necessary to the health of the regime? There seems to have been widespread recognition that religion was necessary generally speaking, and there was no attempt to eradicate or eneverate religion per se, but rather to keep government from taking sides in religious disputes. Not the whole story, but the idea that the founding generation was awash with folks covertly attempting to nihilize religion is disputable. Heh. In this respect, even Jefferson’s aims are much more complex, I think, than Bloom’s abstracty bit here, which makes the founding fit far too neatly into a ancients/moderns narrative than the evidence warrants.
Thoughts?
November 23rd, 2009 | 4:51 pm
You propose that it was religion that made compromises in order to maintain its position in society. Religion in America is based upon the idea that people are recruited by faith and not by force, by desire and not obligation. I believe that there was never a desire for religion to establish and maintain the law of the land, and that because there was an obvious need to maintain order, religion allowed for a central government to establish and maintain that law.
This may be the real difference between American religion and Islam, where Islam is the government and the religion, and may be the real issue of tolerance for us in America. We want to maintain the right to choose, based on our desire and faith, and a government that establishes both the law of the land and the law of God, does not allow this freedom.
Under our American system, we are still allowed to influence our government, which means that our government is influenced by our religions. As citizens, we keep a moral balance within our laws based on God’s laws. We have always elected leaders who claimed a belief in God.
I propose that if there is a stricter separation of church and state, this will be due to the separation of religion from our leaders. If this happens, it will only be because we have chosen not to have religion influence our government and its leaders. I pray that the day will never come, where we feel the need to have our laws be separate from God’s laws; or worse, contradict His laws altogether.
November 23rd, 2009 | 10:24 pm
“America has had no significant history of religious violence or fanaticism since its founding”
Uh, two of the greatest living historians of American religion, Richard Carwardine and Mark Noll, beg to differ.
http://www.amazon.com/Evangelicals-Politics-Antebellum-America-Carwardine/dp/0870499742/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259033035&sr=8-1-spell
http://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Theological-Crisis/dp/0807830127/ref=sr_1_28?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259032959&sr=8-28
November 24th, 2009 | 9:14 am
Boz goes to my point number 1 above…of course there has been religious violence and fanaticism in America…I take it that Will is saying it is not as pronounced as other (most other?) countries. But regardless of how one sets up the comparative scale, both religion and political ideologies have been violent and fanatical at times throughout our history…and both have also been moderated to a much greater degree relative to other nations. I fail to see how you can say religion has been “tamed” here while political ideology has run amuck. Both have been present, but haven’t destroyed the nation in an attempt to remake the fundamental laws in any one given sect or parties image.
November 24th, 2009 | 10:06 am
“I strongly suspect that the compromise whereby religion agreed to be politically and culturally neutered in return for state tolerance is beginning to show some cracks.”
This sounds too much like political philosophy divorced from history. Religion, in the form of Protestant Christianity, was not merely tolerated in the US; it was affirmed.
That religious form was not politically and culturally neutered by “the State,” but rather by Catholics and Jews. They understandably felt excluded and threatened by the Protestant consensus and backed secularism instead.
November 24th, 2009 | 10:46 am
Kevin,
Protestants backed “separation of church and state” as well when confronted with a rising Catholic population in the battles over the public schools (see Philip Hamburger’s essential book, Separation of Church and State: http://www.amazon.com/Separation-Church-State-Philip-Hamburger/dp/0674007344 )
But this is just to prove your point. Catholics, Jews, and various forms of Protestantism have all relied on the principle that government in America ought not to pick a particular winner amongst them. Rather than see this as politically and culturally neutering them, at various times and instances they saw this principle as allowing them to flourish. I mean, one has to explain how the state religions of Europe have famously sapped those religions of their vitality while in America you have people yammering ‘gainst theocracy every election cycle.
In any event, I think we are all questioning the Bloom narrative, wherein the founders simply follow Hobbes and Locke (who are simply cut of the same cloth) and attempt to relegate religion to the realm of opinion. While it is a powerful statement and argument, it does not seem to capture many, many aspects of American life and history, never mind the substantial record we have from the founders themselves.
Among many points, there is an enormous difference between, say, not wanting a particular protestant sect to become “official” and mediating between all religions as equals. Another oddity is the fact that even someone like Jefferson thought you could prove the existence of God, and was mad at priests for making His existence out to be a matter of superstitious faith. Heh. Protestant ministers of the time famously spoke about faith and reason as working together (slavery is wrong on the basis of scripture AND reason!). So even if one buys the idea that religion was relegated to a matter of opinion, and even if Bloom’s conspiracy based on the marching orders of LockeHobbes is correct, this view would have to be nuanced as hell in order to make sense of the history.
And Christianity has always been “threatening” in this country. Slavery, prohibition, fights over laws related to sexual practices, civil rights, etc… I just don’t see how one can say that Christianity has simply rolled over. I think a lot of this line of thinking which Dreher exemplifies is merely present day frustration with the collapse of many forms of Christianity in the US over the last 40-60 years or more…and so there are constant attempts being made to take these frustrations out on the founding era. I think the Constitution is the least of our worries. There in fact be more recent ideas and people and events to blame for the ills that get under Dreher’s skin. You can resist blaming our form of government for the asinine reaction to Hasan…and find a number of other plausible explanations that have nothing to do with the ultimate framework of our laws and their relation to religion.
What I find most ironic is that people like Dreher who seem to think that ultimately the church is more powerful than the state, or at least should if they take their religion seriously, will then make arguments that assume the state is really what dictates and determines the church. I mean, when is it just the church’s own fault for succumbing to modern philosophies that suck out its substance? People have taken religion very seriously and fought within the system to change the laws successfully time and time again in American history.
Isn’t it rather obvious that the reaction to Hasan could come from the acceptance of those ideas rather than the nuanced relationship between church and state in America in the first half of our history? Sure, one can see that the modern way of thinking in the USofA agrees with what you say above, but I just don’t think you find the same thoughts among the founding generation or for most of our history until fairly recently…
November 24th, 2009 | 3:43 pm
Matt Peterson -
You write:
“Isn’t part of the reason for the difference between American democracy and others the fact that the founding generation, for various reasons and to various extents, recognized it as necessary to the health of the regime? There seems to have been widespread recognition that religion was necessary generally speaking, and there was no attempt to eradicate or eneverate religion per se, but rather to keep government from taking sides in religious disputes.”
Right, but isn’t that part of the justification for moralistic therapeutic deism (more charitably: our national civic religion). At its core, isn’t MTD a way to encourage virtues associated with religious belief without any nasty sectarian disputes?
Will Wilson –
Great post, but I’m curious as to what benefits you think we’ll reap from this upsurge in religious sentiment.
November 24th, 2009 | 4:28 pm
I am hoping that someone will do for religion that Galileo did for science. Until we get a Copernicus to clarify religious beliefs into a more plausible religion to have a faith in, I wish we can have a policy that makes it mandatory to make a statement of disclaimer before any religious teachings in state supported institutions.
Steve Borkowski of Hutchinson Island
November 24th, 2009 | 7:27 pm
I find it odd that here is a post on a FT blog agreeing with Damon Linker about the current state of the Christian religion in America, and then going further than he foisting that view onto the founding era. Historically, religion has been an essential part of almost every major political issue in American history. Catholicism and various forms of Protestantism have had and continue to have a major impact on voters and policy debates today…and everyone from Stephen A Douglas to Damon Linker complains about theocracy as a result.
MTD is a phrase used to describe a peculiarly modern, watered down Christianity and it arises from modern sociologists conducting surveys. I am unsure as to its helpfulness or what else it means, although it does seem to capture some truth as to what people believe at present.
The founding generation did want to minimize nasty sectarian violence, but their relation to what modern sociologists call MTD is precisely what I’m questioning here. It seems a half truth at best. Would teens in American answer the same on these surveys from colonial times up until, say, the 1950s? I’m not so sure. And are the current results of these surveys that leads to us coining the term MTD the inevitable result of the American founders and the structure of our regime? Not so sure either…
November 28th, 2009 | 10:22 am
There’s a major error in this post. Germany does, indeed, have established churches. Both the Catholic and Protestant (what we call “Lutheran”) Churches receive public funding through a payroll tax.
<>
Part of the reason that Scientology is so controversial in Germany is that the Scientologists frequently appeal to be included in this system and are refused by most of the Bundesländer governments.
http://www.icnl.org/KNOWLEDGE/ijnl/vol3iss2/art_1.htm
December 15th, 2009 | 6:21 pm
[...] Wilson on Postmodern Conservative had a very interesting post titled Americans Don’t Get Religion. In it, he argues that the American perception of religion is skewed because the government is so [...]
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